Sara Wainscott
The Hard Work of Going Away For a Long Time
The sky moves above the data
grid its waves
sweetly gather and disperse
like pay
when I think of the grass
and its underside
I hear how love can be
a terrain end-
less with wind and customized
to human willingness
the sky cycles through its blooms
pressing on the earth’s inch
brazen as bad policy
I think of how we separate from
our time and how nothing
is solemn nothing is
solemn halloo
to sorrow my good friend
my troublesome
dude of course sorrow
must make sense of course
solemnity must make sense
of course stories must make sense
of course the grids of faces must make sense
of course composition must make sense
of course chores must make sense
of course order must make
something of itself
I tell myself feel better
I talk to rocks
talk to the good rock children
huddled so cute and so tectonic
make rock macaroni
listen to rock macaroni music
and talk shit
about solemnity
maybe today
maybe to death
I can think outside
my mind the precedent
of loss of feeling
the pages to read again
of psalms and aphorisms
the chronosynthesis
of suffering and bliss
and I
write the task lists
carve the figures on the tablets
as constant in my veneration
as a bug all day circling
a bug-sized tractor around a bean